A Beatnik's Guide to the Galaxy II

Map & Territory

By Brother Beatnik
February 6, 2004

Groups of people are pouring over maps. They are sweating. These are the "experts". A mountain is directly ahead of them. The mountain should not be there: there is no mention of a mountain on their maps. An engineering firm has been contracted to knock down the mountain. It's a formidable technical and engineering challenge. All the top scientists, geologists and engineers are working round the clock on this hard problem. The country is widely expected to go bankrupt in this heroic endeavor. Various methods have been proposed including using nuclear weapons...

Why can't the "experts" just re-draw their maps? Which is easier, to re-draw the map or to detonate a mountain?

Galileo was tried by the Inquisition because his suggestion that the Earth orbited the sun did not agree with the Catholic Church's map of reality. Therefore Galileo was a threat to their map making business and had to be silenced. Galileo retracted his "heresy" and was spared a traditional burning at the stake.

To many religions truth is not that important; what is more important is conformity to dogma and belief.

Clearly territory (reality) is more important than the map (dogma). The map is only valuable so long as it matches reality. When it does it is called accurate. When the map does not match reality it is called inaccurate and the consequences can be fatal, as any explorer or sea captain will tell you.

Imagine the "sky-clad" Jains (i.e. naked Jains) emigrated to the North Pole. Imagine further that the priests and authority figures of Jain society insisted that they conform to Jain teaching at all costs and go about naked in sub-zero temperatures. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out what the consequences would be!

The first line of the Tao Te Ching ("Tao that can be stated is not the true Tao") says that the map is not the territory. That is you can't sleep on the word "bed"... that is eating the paper menu cannot satisfy your hunger...that is a stuffed tiger (extinct) in a museum is not equivalent to a living breathing tiger etc. Thus, if you want to see the moon, don't become fixated on the finger. Thus, the philosophy of Tao is a healthy antidote to obsession with maps (dogmas). In fact, the first of Tao Te Ching makes religious fundamentalism impossible!

Taoism is the way of water. Water follows the contours of the land flawlessly. Thus, water maps out the land to perfection. Water also takes the shape of the container. Water has no fixed form of its own, unless it is frozen in to particular shape (dogma, fixed ideas, prejudice). Therefore, people of Tao are more concerned with reality and less attached to maps; like water they map out reality accurately. Thus, Taoism is a flexible spiritual path and does not suffer from the maladies of fanaticism and obsession that plague other religions.

If the map (dogma) does not conform to territory (reality), then it is the map that must be changed and not the territory, and reality must not be sacrificed to protect inept maps. Unreality imposed by force goes against the grain of Tao

A note of warning:

All maps -- even maps drawn by sages and buddhas -- are only tools for navigation and orientation, and not sacred relics to be worshiped. The map is the not the territory. Fingers are not moons. Fingers point to the moon. Do not confuse the two.

For an explanation of who Brother Beatnik is go here.